Namaste Byron Bay

The Vanilla perfume has a name. 

"Namaste"....I greet the God/dess within you.
It's my personal gift to Byron Bay....a new perfume for my new home town. Embodying the spirit and the vibe of the place...
There's a wooden sign on the road leading into town painted with peace symbols and flowers that says :"Slow down, chill out and relax!" and it really sums up the place.
It's the New Age Hippie Mecca of Australia, a bit like San Fransico in the States in the 60's used to be.
It's full of colourful people, amazing beaches with clean sand and blue water, shops selling tie dyed clothes and really expensive designer hippie gear. (Because all of the hippies from the 60's are now grey haired and some of them very well to do.)
Anyway, it's also home to a plethora of workshops, meditation and yoga classes. And chanting OM and useing "Namaste" at the end of

each class is so normal that it's part of the local language.

My perfume Namaste is a scentual impression of Byron in all of it's neo hippie spiritual laid back glory. Vanilla and Sandalwood are the main notes, and here is why I chose them:
Vanilla is sweet and soothing and comforting and relaxing and sexy and well, just downright NICE! on every level you can think of. Everyone loves Vanilla. It's one of those true feel good, happy scents that envokes good childhood memories, innocence, playfulness and just makes you feel like the world is a better place.
The Vanilla in Namaste comes in the form of organically grown gourmand Vanilla beans in the actual

bottle. Amplified by a Vanilla accord made from a combination of incense resins, from tolu balsam over tonka, labdanum and a variety of vanilla absolutes and CO2 extracts to give a real sophistication and a sexier, elegant take on the innocence of Vanilla itself.
And it's held by a beautiful classic Sandalwood base. Sandalwood is one of the most spiritual scents in existance. Used for thousands of years in spiritual ceremonies for healing and blessing.
It is also used in Aruveda to treat depression and anxiety, and has similar applications in modern Aromatherapy. The twist is that it's an Australian

Sandalwood, not Indian. Indian Sandalwood has been harvested almost into extinction, which makes it a really bad environmental choice. And I also wanted to make sure that Namaste had a real Australian grounding to it, since, after all, it's from Byron, and Oz and all. Australia is a very down to earth place. And Byron Bay, for all of it's spiritual side, is still an Australian version. So I've used a really wonderful Australian Sandalwood that actually reflects this perfectly. It's an amazing deep, musky, dry and elegant smelling Sandalwood grown in Western Australia on an eco-conscious environmentally sustainable plantation.
And it's musky deep woody character enhances the elegant notes of the Vanilla and resin accord in the top and mid layers of the perfume.
I made up the first batch a few weeks ago. And sold the whole lot within 5 days. So I guess there must be something right there :) So I've made up a bath and body oil to go with it too....just for Xmas! If you'd like to try some for yourself, click here to go to the webshop!

Vanilla, Vanilla and more Vanilla

One of the first questions people seem to ask is "Do you have anything with Vanilla?"
And while some of my perfumes have Vanilla notes, ("Goddess" and "Craving" in particular)
I've never made a straight Vanilla perfume.
There's a number of reasons for this.
For starters it's not one of my favourite notes. Vanilla in itself is a tad too sweet for my taste. And the commercial artificial Vanilla perfumes out there actually make me a tad nauseous. They tend to be so overwhelmingly sickly sweet and cloying that it made me a bit of a Vanilla Nazi.
But after moving into my new bricks and mortar studio, and being asked, again and again whether I had a Vanilla Scent, I figured I should listen to my public and take another look at that ingredient.
This brought me to the second reason Ive never brought out a Vanilla perfume before: Natural Vanilla is a pain in the a*** to work with.
I have quite a collection of Vanilla extracts in my collection. Vanilla absolute from 4 different countries, CO2 extract forms, even food grade Vanilla essence!
What they all have in common is that they don't willingly dissolve in either alcohol or oil bases.
So I went back to the drawing board and ordered a large quantity of high quality natural Vanilla beans to experiment with too.
I began the Vanilla project in June this year, and one of my shelves is literally stacked with with tinctures in a variety of bases, powdered Vanilla beans, bags of Madagascar Special pods, absolutes in alcohol and CO2 extracts in oil....all sitting there flatly refusing to bloody well dissolve!
But in the end I remembered an old trick I had learned from an ancient apothecary text book many years ago and lo and behold, I got my Vanilla scent into an oil base! (And yes, I could tell you how I did it, but I think I might save that to include in the book I'm writing at the moment!)
This does mean that for the moment, it will only available as a perfume oil, as the process simply doesn't work properly in alcohol....but the oil base seems to lend itself to the softness of the Vanilla scent anyway....

So from there I sat down to come up with a Vanilla perfume that actually appealed to ME!
As I said in the beginning, my biggest beef with Vanilla has always been it's sweetness.
So I built my Vanilla perfume on a deep dry woody base with a lot of Australian Sandalwood in it. The Sandalwood I use has a particularly high Santalol content, similar to the Indian Mysore Sandalwood, but it is a lot drier and sharper than the Indian one, which in this perfume works perfectly.
I then experimented with a number of other resin extracts with complimentary notes to them to enhance the shy softness of the Vanilla itself.
There's quite a number of them: Styrax, Benzoin, Labdanum, Tonka bean, Tolu and Peru Balsam being just a few I tried...
each of them lent a different note to the perfume and it took quite a bit of fiddling to find just the right combination for the effect I was looking for.
But I got it.
And made up a test batch.
And sold the first bottle half an hour later, with no label, no name....
And then posted on facebook and sold the rest of the batch in a week.
Still with no name, no label, not even a proper website page.


So I've just made up a second batch, and added a bath and body oil version...(of which Ive already sold the first 2 bottles here in the shop).
And have added it to the new website.
Still without a name, or proper label.

Vanilla Wood perfume oil

Vanilla Wood Bath & Body oil

Very Vanilla

My latest project: A Vanilla perfume.
I've been asked for one so many times over the years...but it's not an easy undertaking.
You see I want it to be a real "pure" vanilla. Maybe with some woody musk ingredients to it, but nothing to mask it or take away from it's basic..well.. "vanilla-ness".
So I'm working with gentle woods, and ambers, and musky smooth bases....
And it's challenging. Vanilla is such a subtle scent...and almost anything seems to overpower it.
Plus the bloody vanilla absolute I like best doesn't seem to dissolve in anything. Argh.

There's so many forms of Vanilla to play with...starting with the fermented vanilla pods themselves which I have incubating in oil and alcohol in bottles all over my shelves...then there's the aforementioned absolute (grr), CO2 extracts, and wonder of wonders, natural vanillin powder! Lovely and subtle to the EXTREME!!!!
Then there's all the "vanilla-ish" other ingredients...benzoin, styrax, tolu balsam, labdanum, peru balsam...but all of them are strong and sweet with sharp overtones I dont really want in the mix.....
So far I'm happiest with a really gentle wood/ musk base which doesn't take centre stage...but it still outshines the vanilla....
We'll see.
Any testers and bloggers out there who'd like a few of the advanced version to test sniff when I'm happy with them?